I Drove Chevrolet's Bolt - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/chevrolet-bolt-ev-ces-2016-4 <comment><USER2> This might sound ridiculous, but I really just don't want GM to win. The American automotive industry moved ridiculously slowly towards electric and alternative fuel vehicles, and ultimately is only doing so to sell units on what they perceive as a new niche.

If I'm giving money to a company for a new type of transportation, it's going to be the one committing to the broad goals of bettering humanity, not just capitalizing on someone else proving the existence of a market.

I'm not just behind Tesla, there are other companies like Arcimoto ([https://www.arcimoto.com/](https://www.arcimoto.com/)) that are putting significant effort into redesigning transportation from the ground up.

<comment><USER3> In really don't like framing this as winning or losing. Tesla has already won - they've successfully entered the market, they have customers and are making money (plenty of revenue at least, I don't know about profit)

I want electric cars to win. That doesn't happen if Tesla is the only company making them.

<comment><USER4> More importantly, multiple entrants into the electric vehicle market will drive development in new directions.

If it were only Tesla doing anything of note - with all the best will in the world - the evolution of products would ultimately stagnate as they refined their own particular flavour of electric vehicle.

A monopoly held by a young, interesting company is still a monopoly.

<comment><USER5> Indeed. I'm happy to see Tesla succeeding, because I love their moxie and feel like the Big 3 have had a forcible perspective shift coming for a long while now, but I have no interest in buying one of Tesla's cars. The powertrain is great but I hate the cockpit and the "phone home" stuff. I am looking forward to future competition which moves into the market Tesla is prying open and offers a car which I might be happy to drive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One thing I like about the Bolt over the Tesla 3 is the fact that it has buttons for climate control and basic music functions. I'm really not a fan of where your are forced to do everything on a giant touchscreen stuck to the middle of the dash.

<comment><USER7> I thought I'd miss physical buttons, too, but I don't. I really don't. It's very easy to use the touchscreen in a Tesla. Plus, you do have physical buttons available for climate: they are on the steering wheel (if you decide to chose that option).

<comment><USER8> Can you safely operate the entertainment system while driving? With physical buttons, I can turn the volume knob or cycle through radio station presets without taking my attention off the road. With a touch screen, you don't get tactile feedback and modal dialogs or different screens can block controls, so you have to divert your gaze and attention to the screen. I haven't driven in a Tesla, so maybe they've figured it out.

<comment><USER9> Only if you use the steering wheel controls. Despite what others may believe, anything you need to do on the giant touch screen absolutely cannot be done safely while driving.

<comment><USER10> I wonder, is there actual evidence that physical buttons are better? I don't doubt that screwing with a touchscreen while driving is dangerous, but I have to wonder about the common wisdom that screwing with physical buttons while driving isn't.

<comment><USER9> Yes, distraction.gov has some research you might be interested in, based on studies of actual car crashes. Note that the key point is distraction, not necessarily touchscreens by themselves. The problem is that it's impossible to use a touchscreen without looking at it, which means you're not looking at the road, and are thus distracted. NHTSA basically says that if it takes more than a single quick glance to perform an action, it's dangerous. This is why most OEMs lock out the touch screen controls while the car is in motion.

<comment><USER11> Ha! most OEMs like which ones? I've never seen a car where the touchscreen controls are locked while driving. At most I've seen ones that either won't let you use a touch keyboard while driving, or that will let you do that, after tapping a warning message about that being dangerous.

<comment><USER12> Lexus vehicles used to do this, at least back in 2006, so that you could only operate basic functions but could not set navigation destinations, etc. It was a huge pain, but given the touchscreen-only interface it made sense to minimize distractions. With my current car in one of the best designed control wheel UIs in the industry, I can navigate the menus almost exclusively without looking at the display (given some practice).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The Bolt (if the numbers $30k and 200+ miles) means that a company that isn't Tesla can build a car that is competitive at least on range/price with the Model3.

I thought Tesla had an advantage on battery tech and/or production that meant the competition had to produce vastly inferior (on range) cars, such as the leaf/i3 etc.

If GM can produce a 200+ mile range EV at this cost, then Toyota, VW or BMW should soon be able to produce a _good_ 200+ mile EV at a competitive price.

<comment><USER11> Tesla does not have and never had any battery tech. They use off-the-shelf Panasonic batteries that are exactly the same ones you put in flashlights[1].

Tesla made one major innovation. They realized that people will buy an electric car for $100,000. That's really it! They have an attractive and very good car, but it is market innovation that is Tesla's essential advantage.

1: [http://www.amazon.com/NCR18650B-3400mAh-Rechargeable- Battery...](http://www.amazon.com/NCR18650B-3400mAh-Rechargeable-Battery- Panasonic/dp/B00DHXY72O)

<comment><USER14> > Tesla made one major innovation

You haven't ridden in a Tesla doing its self-driving thing, have you?

I didn't care about Tesla until I rode in one doing this.

<comment><USER15> Other cars at similar price points were doing the same things years, sometimes a decade ago. Tesla's innovation was marketing them to techies on the Google self driving hype train rather than as safety features for the country club set.

<comment><USER14> Which ones? I don't mean just staying in your lane. The car I was in stopped at a red light (technically just following the car in front of it, which also stopped). Though I haven't researched the history of this feature.

<comment><USER16> At least the Volvo V40 has that. And it's not a luxury car :)

<comment><USER17> > Volvo

> not a luxury car

<comment><USER16> > Volvo

> not a luxury car in Europe

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why does every non Tesla electric look so ugly? And why does every article written by supposedly competent journalists not mention how ugly literally ever other electric car is when they discuss tradeoffs?

It could very well be a close race between 2-5 electric cars. But attractiveness could be another reason 1 is the big winner.

<comment><USER14> The Ford Focus Electric looks fine.

I think there are other electric cars out there that are the electric version of a "typical" car.

My theory is automakers want the car to stand out, even if it's ugly, since otherwise how will anyone know you are driving an electric vehicle?

<comment><USER19> VW Golf is sold with the same outward chassis in electric, plug-in hybrid, regular hybrid, gasoline and diesel models.

(The electric has a practical range of about 80 to 120 km, i.e. around 100 miles, so not a great success.)

<comment><USER20> I generally take this as a bad sign. Full-EV cars are substantially different in their requirements from ICE engined cars, not taking advantage of that just hobbles them.

For example, the Tesla 3 pushes the passenger space forward and backwards to fit more people in the same space. It can do so because there's no big, heavy engine up front. Starting with a traditional car body and adding electric is just going to waste space.

<comment><USER19> Yes, but internally the eGolf is not quite the same structure as combustion engine models.

Also the most iconic full EV car, Tesla model S, looks very much like combustion engine cars. In fact, from distance it's hard to tell it apart from a Ford Mondeo, the symbol of mediocrity (at least in the UK) which is also a fine and nicely contoured car.

The more distinctly formed EV cars, on the other hand, look about as weird as Granma Duck's 1916 Detroit Electric; they have some futuristic aerodynamics but on the desirability scale, they seem to suck.

<comment><USER20> The externals are driven by aerodynamics and should be converging generally.

The interior is where there's a bunch of new rules in play, with the front mounted ICE being replaced with a floor of batteries and between wheel motors. That directly allows Tesla to be amongst the safest cars ever built, and to fit more passengers, more comfortably than similarly sized ICE cars.

Tesla needs those advantages to balance out initial shortcoming of EV cars, at lower mass-market price points that becomes even more important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> He said the traction control engaged when accelerating out of some corners. That may be the result of high torque or a badly designed car.

I really hope they do not make the mistake of making this a front wheel drive car. A front wheel drive car when combined with a high torque electric motor is basically asking for trouble. The high torque applied to the front wheels screws up the steering, makes it imprecise, causes understeer, or in extreme cases even the loss of steering control.

This was a problem with the Chevy Spark electric. It was very fast but, when you slam on the gas, you lose all steering input and the car tends to veer to the right and there is nothing you can do about it. (except of course to let go of the gas, so you can get the steering back).

Electric engines are so small there is a lot of flexibility designers have as to where to place them. It would be a huger mistake if bold designers placed them in the front.

[Edit: I meant understeer not oversteer]

<comment><USER22> Large portions of people that live where it snows will only drive a front wheel drive (or all wheel drive) vehicle. My first car was a $400 rear wheel drive beast, so it doesn't bother me - but a lot of people think I'm crazy driving my (rear wheel) Camaro in the winter.

<comment><USER23> Yep, this. I don't care about crazy good performance, but do want something I feel handles reliably in snowy and icy conditions.

Call me an unskilled driver, but I don't feel as confident in bad conditions with rear wheel drive.

<comment><USER24> You're an unskilled driver.

Traction is traction. No matter how a car handles it'll handle the same way on every surface, the traction threshold will be different. No matter which wheels are driven turning and braking is the same. In a straight line it front/rear doesn't really matter. RWD will slip out, FWD will just spin and in either case the driver (the one's that aren't the worst of the worst) will lift off the throttle before anything bad happens. In a modern car traction control will just work it's magic and you wouldn't even know. Ditto for turning from a stop. The driven wheels are irreverent to turning while slowing. The problem is in a long sweeping turn that the driver wants to accelerate out of, like a highway ramp. FWD will just plow straight into whatever is outside the turn. RWD will do the same thing but the car will be oriented differently. No matter which wheels are driven if you break traction in a turn you're going to go wide, better hope you've got enough space to correct it. The safety advantage with understeer is that if you do something monumentally stupid (e.g. drunk guy takes highway off ramp at 90mph) the front of the car with all it's crash test safety will be between you and the consequences of your actions.

The RWD vs FWD thing is more of a "what I don't know can't hurt me." The novice won't notice a little bit of understeer whereas anyone will notice a little bit of oversteer and everyone who can't apply a reasonable amount of self control to their right foot should bend over, grab their ankles and spend their money on some snow tires.

The Miata club of Alaska was featured in one of the car magizines (I forget which) and they basically said "Everyone that thinks we're insane for driving these cars year round in Alaska should know that the design characteristics that help maximize use of available traction in the dry don't stop working in the snow."

<comment><USER25> You are overlooking weight distribution. The traction of a given tire on a given surface generally increases as the weight on that tire increases. Given two otherwise similar cars, one with the engine over the drive wheels, and one with the engine over non-drive wheels, the former will generally have an advantage in snow, especially on hills.

<comment><USER26> Agreed, but if we move the conversation back to electric cars - they might not have the same weight distribution, right? The Tesla uses direct drive on the wheels (the Leaf seems to use a more traditional "one motor in the front" configuration though), and then you have the huge battery spread out over the floor

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'll be replacing a Leaf with a Bolt at the end of the year. I think it's an attractive looking car myself, and the hatchback form factor has grown on me. The tech features (10" tablet with android/carplay, built-in LTE wifi, rear camera mirror, birds-eye surround camera system, collision alerts) will all be exciting upgrades compared to the Leaf, which is a pretty barebones car even at the top trim level. The Model 3 could be my household's second car (currently a non-EV), but that's almost 3 years out for east coast delivery even if Tesla's perfectly on-time and 10x's their production capacity in a year. Plus, the purchase incentives will probably be long gone by then.

<comment><USER28> Did you lease the Leaf or purchase outright?

<comment><USER27> I bought a used 2012-SL with 15K miles for about $10K last year. Got a $500 EV charger on Amazon, and installed it for $125. I loved my first test drive in an EV and really don't want to go back to a conventional car as my daily driver. The 5-year-old battery only gets 70-some miles to a charge on a good day, so I'm looking forward to something longer range in the next year. That limits me to either a Bolt or a plug-in hybrid like the Volt. I'm leaning toward the Bolt, especially if I can get my hands on one before winter is in full swing.

<comment><USER28> Just $10K? That's amazing! I was thinking that a leased new model of the Leaf (or preferably the Bolt) would be ideal given the battery issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I know this is subjective and shouldn't matter, but I think the Bolt is ugly.

In fact out of all the non-Tesla EVs the only one I don't find ugly is the Fiat 500e which is only sold in CA (and now Oregon) as a compliance car and its own CEO hates it. It is a nice little EV though.

All of this also ignores the coming autonomous cars which I think are going to be here sooner than people realize (maybe this is the big part 2 of the model 3 reveal). When that happens I'm not confident the existing car companies will be able to compete - they're desperately trying to acquire the necessary tech now, but it's a little late.

<comment><USER30> do you include hybrid EVs like the Volt and Prius in your "ugly" list?

Personally, I love my Volt. I only use gasoline on rare occasions -- a couple of out-of-state trips per year -- but don't have to make long stops (30 minutes is long for me) at charging stations along the way. And I think it's a pretty cool looking car. But then, I'm over 30, so what do I know about cool?

<comment><USER31> A typical time constant for a supercharger stop is 15 minutes.

<comment><USER10> You might have one that short from time to time, but typical is 20-30 minutes in my experience.

<comment><USER31> Interesting, on a trip from the Bay Area to Tahoe, it's about 15 minutes each. I stand corrected :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I am looking forward to the Bolt, might even go that route as I like the form factor a bit more than the traditional sedan route Tesla taking. That and I would like to do 200+ mile range EV before 2020 rolls around.

The one thing that the Bolt raises more so than the 3 is that it will invalidate the pricing this year for any EV that gets under 100 mile range and wants to charge near 30k. When this car reaches the lot people are going to question how the other manufacturers think they can justify near 30k or 50k in the case of BMW pricing for sub 100 miles. Even Chevy might have some issues with range extender Volt which has 50 EV miles. I can imagine some shoppers thinking, it gives up 150EV miles for a gas engine?

Then finally when the 3 is available in quantity the other manufacturers better have 200 mile range EVs of their own or severely discounted lower range EV. Most will use EVs to up their fleet fuel mileage but some may find a real market there. Granted even all those reservations for the 3 look nice but 300k isn't squat when up against numbers of all cars just sold in the US let alone world wide

<comment><USER30> > _" I can imagine some shoppers thinking, it gives up 150EV miles for a gas > engine?"_

Sure -- I think the Volt is targeting a different use case, of people whose daily commutes are less than 40-50 total miles but who occasionally make long trips.

It's basically the perfect car for me (I bought a 2013 Volt off-lease a few months ago.) I'm a stay-at-home dad, my wife works from home, and most of the driving I do is to locations within a 5-mile radius (family, church, the grocery store, and a handful of restaurants.) Two or three times per year, we travel out of state, at which point I'm glad for the ~340 mile combined range and would be disappointed with having to stop every 200 miles and sit for 30+ minutes waiting for a full charge.

But for someone who regularly travels 50-200 miles per day, the Bolt or 3 or other EVs in that class might be a much better option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Question - why almost all electric cars have to be incredibly ugly? Like it's a requirement for a car to be electric almost. Nissan Leaf looks like a fridge turned sideways, BMW i3 looks like a collection of parts designed by different people which don't really match together, Vauxhall(Opel) Ampera looks like someone smashed a Prius with a hammer, Tesla's and BMW i8 look ok but these are premium cars, and now the Bolt has a back that looks like a back of one of those dummy cars they use for crash testing.

I understand there's a push for "hey, I'm different, I'm electric!" but I know quite a few people who would be in a market for a new Leaf but they won't buy it because of the looks, it's almost like it's impossible to put electric motor and batteries into a shape that looks like a conventional car.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'd really like to have an electric Corvette. If anyone wants to work on a conversion, I could get on board with that.

<comment><USER35> My dream for years has been to get a '79 Stingray shell, build it as electric and do a fully modernized interior. I've just always loved that particular body style.

Perhaps one day we'll be able to order totally custom cars and have robots build them for us at a reasonable price. Now that's what I'd call progress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> One thing that always seems missing from these comparison articles is the Supercharger network.

It makes such a huge difference, I just don't see how CCS catches up(not to mention that there's no long term planning around it).

<comment><USER27> There are no Superchargers near me, or anywhere near my route to family on the holidays. Tesla's network outside of California is so sparse as to be useless for much of the country. Here's the map of Tesla's 613 supercharging stations (right) versus 27000 public non-Tesla chargers (left):

[http://i.imgur.com/Ktg8h3W.png](http://i.imgur.com/Ktg8h3W.png)

So the fact that _Tesla_ has no good answer to remote charging for most of the US hasn't stopped it from selling cars outside of California. You're more likely to have a non-Tesla quick charger on any given route than a Supercharger, and if you own a non-Tesla EV/hybrid, you'll probably be able to use it "out of the box", where a Tesla will need a $450 plug adapter. If I want to drive west, I won't run into a Tesla Supercharger for about 250 miles -- outside the Model 3's range -- but I'll pass 9 quick chargers from other operators on the way.

Long-term to reach millions of EV unit sales a year, car makers -might- need a better answer to charging away from home, if other technology and social changes don't obviate the need. In those coming years, Blink/Chargepoint/etc have lots of time to continue expanding their networks -- including adding more quick chargers, more plug types, and more reliability -- and can likely do it faster than Tesla or any other single company can on their own.

<comment><USER10> "Tesla's network outside of California is so sparse as to be useless for most people."

This statement is exaggerated beyond all connection to reality. Yes, there are holes, but coverage outside of California is still quite good for the most part. If you live in or need to travel to Arkansas or West Texas or North Dakota then you're going to have trouble, but the vast majority of the population is covered at this point.

Non-Tesla chargers vastly outnumber Tesla chargers, but the speed just isn't adequate. Most of them are _far_ too slow for long trips. The fast DC chargers that are out there are just _barely_ adequate. You'll top out at maybe 150MPH of charging, while Tesla's can hit 360MPH.

<comment><USER27> I'm really not exaggerating. Look at that Supercharger map again. Put a pinpoint on it randomly, and imagine this is where you live. Put another pinpoint 120 miles away, and imagine this is where you have family in the next city over. 99% of the time, there will be no Supercharger anywhere near the line between you and your destination. That's the kind of trip people actually make and have range anxiety about -- visiting the grandparents for Christmas -- not the road trip to the other side of the country where you can plan on driving the wrong way for 70 miles to get onto the nearest Tesla-covered route. It's these trips that the Supercharger network is pretty useless for, because it only exists in this weird east-west-north-south grid with entire states empty in the middle of half the lines it draws. Chargers aren't like cell phone stations; they don't provide "coverage" to some radius, they're single points of utility.

<comment><USER37> That thought experiment isn't very useful, because people aren't randomly distributed across the continent. Much of the plains and rockies are empty of people.[1]

1\. [https://johnstonarchitects.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/pop_l...](https://johnstonarchitects.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/pop_lg.jpg)

<comment><USER38> This may be true, but this is also exactly the kind of country you might want to drive through on your way from your home to a destination.

<comment><USER37> Tesla has supercharger stations on the major freeways through unpopulated areas. And they're building more. This is effectively a non-problem. Affordability is a much bigger bottleneck for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> There should really be some additional metrics for these kind of reviews.

So you got to drive a car for a testdrive/hour/week? How is maintenance? How are charging times? How does it compare to a normal car during its lifecycle? How much is the battery worth after 1000 charge cycles? How much will the car be worth when I want to sell it?

With a normal car, I have an idea that I can fuel it 1000 times and it will still work, albeit the maintenance of which I have a general idea as well. How does translate to an EV car?

I still have so many questions.

</comment><comment><USER40> The most important feature of the Teslas, in my opinion, is safety. If I had to choose between a Bolt and a Model 3 -- poor safety ratings would have been a deciding factor.

Also, I hope it can't be "benchmark-optimized" like in web browsers.

<comment><USER41> I think I understand what you are saying, but official crash test ratings have not been released for either vehicle yet.

I don't think crash test safety can be "benchmark-optimized" per se; outside companies do the testing and the proof is in the pudding, so to speak. However, there may be vehicle incidents that would not be covered by safety or crash tests. The safety dollars go to mitigating incidents with the highest rate of fatalities.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_motor_vehicle_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_motor_vehicle_collisions#Proportion_of_deaths_by_type_of_impact)

Disclaimer: I work for GM, but not on this product. Any opinions are my own.

<comment><USER42> Tesla has a history of addressing safety in a way that no other manufacturers seem to prioritize for (given that car design is over constrained and you have to compromise somewhere). I would be really surprised if the Bolt earned 5-star ratings in every category. On Tesla's Model S, they designed to achieve 5-star if the tests were applied everywhere on the car --- not just the official test points.

<comment><USER41> I would agree that Tesla has a history of safety, and that is laudable. I hope you are surprised by the Bolt's safety rating when it comes out.

It is really great that Tesla has prioritized safety.

They do have a few things going for them that other OEMs don't:

      * Only two models in production, both of which are on the same architecture. (soon to be three)

      * No history of failure:

      - GM's X-frame

      - Really bad seatbelts: Nearly everyone until the 1980s

      - Chevy Corvair (Thanks Nader!) [1]

      - Pintos catching on fire

      - Audi 5000 unintended acceleration in the 1980s

      - Pontiac Fieros catching on fire

      - Ford Explorers rolling over

      - GM's key switch issue

      - Toyota's unintended acceleration

When you look at all of those, you can see that at the time, either the engineers didn't care about safety (most OEMs until the 1970s), didn't prioritize safety, just missed something, or they didn't realize that a particular design had safety implications.

Tesla has learned all of those lessons and that's great. Most other OEMs have also learned those lessons, and that's great too!

1\. Nader has been credited with pushing for consumer safety generally and vehicle safety specifically.

Disclaimer: again, all opinions are solely my own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm interested as heck to know more about this instrumentation panel showing "technique" as an indicator for the car's energy consumption. Ostensibly using gamification to encourage more conscious driving?

<comment><USER27> Pretty much all hybrids and EVs do the gamification thing. Honda's got "eco score", Ford has "efficiency leaves", Nissan has "trees", etc. The more economically you drive, the more .. things .. you collect on the dashboard.

<comment><USER20> My standard ICE Honda does this too. A green arrow to tell me to switch up/down a gear and a row if up to 5 green dots to tell me when I'm driving efficiently (e.g. accelerating gently or coasting to a stop, not harsh acceleration followed by hard braking).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> In other news, Chevrolet ceased sales of new cars in Europe altogether. No more Chevrolet for Europe. GM needs this to work.

<comment><USER19> That's pretty much just a badging thing. GM sells European cars with the Opel badge (and Vauxhall in the UK).

Chevrolet Volt was same as Opel Ampera, for example (but it had so bad sales that it was discontinued).

<comment><USER44> True to an extent, because not all Chevrolet vehicles are re-branded nor are they available throughout Europe.

<comment><USER19> In fact, in December 2013 GM announced that it withdraws the Chevrolet brand from Europe, with just a couple of exceptions of "iconic vehicles" (Corvette and Camaro), plus the Russian market where they will continue.

So, you can't really buy any new Chevrolet badged cars in Europe.

[http://www.chevrolet.co.uk/owners-area/important-customer- in...](http://www.chevrolet.co.uk/owners-area/important-customer- information.html)

The Chevrolets sold in Europe were almost exclusively made in South Korea. American cars and car brands have a rather lousy quality reputation in Europe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I still don't understand why anyone would buy a Tesla 3 or a Bolt over a Volt at this point in time for recharge time and infrastructure.

<comment><USER46> You shouldn't be downvoted for this. It's a legit comment.

I feel like there's a pretty major hidden cost in hybrids in that you now have to maintain the gasoline engine (and potentially entire drivetrain) as well as the electric one. You kind of get the worst of both worlds there -- plus you have a weight penalty of course.

I have very little use for >200 mile/day drives, so getting an electric that can handle my 99% driving case sounds better to me than getting a Volt which I'll still need to semi-regularly fill up and maintain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Why does it look like a new balance?

</comment><comment><USER48> "the Bolt will feature 4G LTE connectivity and OnStar support, " ... so GM can track you and sell the data.</comment>


Short Guide to a DIY Computer Science Education - <AUTHOR> https://bradfieldcs.com/diy/ <comment><AUTHOR> This guide does a good job answering the question: "what should I learn to learn computer science?"

Author gives more emphasis to subjects that he has observed self taught programmers to be self admittedly lacking in. The coursework outlined resembles that of a top cs program, without making it look as elaborate as a curriculum sheet.

What does HN think of the above? Also would anyone recommend alternative learning material that is more sustainable to follow than a dry static book?</comment>


PayPal shuts down Hackers For Charity - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackersforcharity.org/259/paypal-shuts-us-down/

<comment><USER2> Going against the tide here...

Although this is about PayPal, any bank would probably respond the same way. Try depositing a check made out to your business into a personal account. Most banks will simply refuse to do so. You can go into the bank and show tons of documentation that you own the business AND if it's an emergency AND you get the bank manager involved they may bend the rules, but usually it simply won't happen. Trying to resolve that over the phone? Forget it.

What this guy is doing (HFC) is a great cause, but the entrepreneurs out there should read this as a cautionary tale. It's because of stuff like this that we need to get our business finances set up properly from the beginning. A few minutes spent filing paperwork a year ago would have prevented all his problems.

 _Banks (yeah, I know PP isn't a bank) don't screw around!_

<comment><USER3> I have to agree. To me, it seems naive not to expect problems when mixing business and personal banking (corporate veil: pierced), not having the correct paperwork available, using not-on-file email addresses, etc.

If PayPal or a bank didn't insist on these strictures, imagine the outrage when someone's accounts are cleaned out by some fraudster with flimsy, half- good credentials.

Especially when traveling (especially to Africa!) you have to arrange things carefully in advance. Maybe someday things will be smoother, but it's still messy in 2009.

Hackers: Learn to hack your finances, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a pretty sad story. I thought everyone knew not to keep money in their PayPal account? As soon as I get a payment I transfer it out to my bank.

<comment><USER5> They can pull it out without your conscent.

<comment><USER6> Get a bank account for just paypal transactions and then anytime there is sufficient money, whatever threshold makes you nervous if you lost it, in the account transfer it to a different account. If they try to pull from an account that has no money they will not get any money.

<comment><USER7> Depends on the bank. Most banks would be happy to give them the money and charge you the overdraft fee and interest. (But of course, you can just not pay.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It really seems as if PP has taken a turn for the worse lately. My only experience with them was a few years ago when I had a problem with someone accessing my account fraudulently. They where easy to get ahold of and proactive. A shame that doesn't seem to be the case any longer.

<comment><USER9> Isn't this the flip side of the same proactivity? PayPal is paranoid that someone is going to try to regulate them as a bank. As a result, they'll shut down anything that doesn't look 100% legitimate.

I hate to be the devil's advocate here, because it looks like HFC was truly wronged. But still: an off-shore not-quite-yet-a-charity with no paper trail, no office, and no contact info beyond a web site is hardly a paragon of transparent legitimacy. Put "hacker" in the title and things get worse for the poor PayPal pencil pusher to figure out. I'm not surprised at all that someone got cold feet and pulled the plug. That doesn't mean PayPal is "right" to do this. But their motivations are pretty clear to me.

One lesson here is that organization is your friend. A few weeks spent filling out 501c3 forms and establishing banking records (maybe finding a pro bono accountant, too) would have obviously been a good idea in hindsight. Charging off to Africa shouting "Give me money!", not so much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So if he's not a 501(c)3, how exactly was he going to account for all this money with the IRS?

</comment><comment><USER11> I think its time for a good alternative. I mean I know there are some out there but what else has market?

<comment><USER12> The problem is that money transfer and storage tend to be rather heavy and complex things. And countries like to regulate banking.

But nevertheless, a online payment thingie that doesn't suck? Sign me up!

<comment><USER13> Paypal isn't even considered a bank in any of the countries it operates in (except Luxembourg, where they serve all of the EU). This means they're not subject to any of the regulations that are attempts to keep banks honest.

Keeping your money in PayPal is a massive risk. As a customer, you have no protection, no deposit insurance (covered by your Federal government in Canada and USA), and basically when things go wrong, you are stuck with sending emails and legal action.

What a massive scam. Spread the word: avoid PayPal.

<comment><USER14> Besides this incident, what other evidence do you present that Paypal is a massive scam? I've used paypal for 5 years and never had a problem. I'm sure things like this happen, but it has to be a negligible percentage of their volume.

<comment><USER15> Not my own personal experiences.....but nevertheless: <http://www.paypalsucks.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For those who are unfamiliar with Johnny, check out recordings of his talks. "Low-tech hacking" (or similar title) was a beautiful talk, entertainingly delivered. He's working on different purposes now, but he contributed a lot to the security industry and an all-around great guy.

<comment><USER17> It's "No-Tech Hacking" <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2160824376898701015>

He has a book out by the same title, all proceeds from the book go to the charity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Don't trust anybody with your money that you can't physically shake your fist at. It keeps them honest.</comment>


Idiots rule the AT&T Yahoo worlds - <AUTHOR>

Some idiots decided that I need to see full page news items and should really click (four time) to get to my email. My email home page suddenly changed to a new and shiney "AT&T Powered by Yahoo" page. Thus forcing me to go to an email client like thunderbird (or merge it into my outlook) - losing precious ad monies.
Pathetic - they should be fired immediately.
Have others seen something similar? <comment><USER2> You seem like the type of person who should have a personal blogspot page.</comment>


Show HN: Taking the Emmys by Storm (screencast on how to develop with Storm) - <AUTHOR> http://storm.twitsprout.com

<comment><USER2> Very nice. Helped me understanding Storm better. To bad that the demo was in Java made everything more compicated. Its kind of obvious that the Strom was written in Clojure. The Java Api seams to be a rather thin layer ontop of the clojure version. I cant imagen that you would have the same serialization problems in clojure, Nathan would of have fixed this. It will probebly be fixed in the java layer soon enought.

Edit: "I cant imagen that you would have the same serialization problems in clojure, Nathan would of have fixed this." seams like the wrong formulation. I didn't want to criticize. I guessed that the problem was in the Java API witch probebly has less testing then the clojure version but it seams to be a design decision.

<comment><AUTHOR> I definitely get the sense that Java is a first-class citizen in the Storm world, even though it's written in Clojure. There's also the fact that I know next to nothing about Clojure (although I love Scheme, so maybe this'd be a good time to pick it up), but I definitely wouldn't mind doing a video on Storm's multilang support for other languages that I do understand (like Python or Ruby).

As for the serialization problems, that's mostly just a lack of documentation :( There was no problem with it once I learned how to register a serializer with Storm.

<comment><USER2> I based my argument on the observation that there were alot of hash maps and that alot of things weren't typed. Two things that are very clojury.

Edit: I don't read alot of java code but I guess that Hash maps aren't that common in most java programmes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Been wanting to checkout Storm since the announcement - looking forward to watching the rest of this...

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there an example of a storm cluster in Clojure somewhere? I could only find examples for Java, Python and Ruby on github.

<comment><USER5> I'm going to try to get an example + docs out in the next few weeks.

<comment><USER4> Excellent, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would love to see a Clojure version of this

</comment><comment><USER7> The best part is at the end when he plays back all 200K Emmy tweet in 6 minutes and says "I feel like I'm narrating a horse race"! Hilarity ensued.

<comment><USER8> I love how the action unfolds at the end, each show competing for most buzz across Twitter while the tweets are streaming by! Nice work on lining up the commentary with events from the Emmys!</comment></comment>


Haskell Platform 2013.2.0.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.haskell.org/platform/?v=2013.2.0.0 <comment><USER2> The Haskell platform is the perfect place to start with Haskell--it comes with the compiler, some useful tools (like cabal, Haskell's package manager) and a core set of well-tested and well-supported libraries. If you have been considering Haskell, this is a great time to go for it!

I'm particularly excited by the updated OpenGL and GLUT bindings. Graphics is currently not Haskell's strong suit, but I think this might soon be changing. There has been plenty of work on high-level things like functional reactive programming (FRP), but this isn't all that useful without the low-level libraries for actually drawing to the screen! These updated packages should hopefully make writing graphics programs in Haskell much nicer.

<comment><USER3> afaik, carmack is working on a Haskell implementation for wolfenstein 3D. this might have been his excuse to start that project.

there is a really primative FPS shooter up on the haskell wiki, but its really not well structured.

<http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Frag>

<comment><USER4> To be fair, it is the world's first 3D FPS written using a functional reactive programming style. 8 years ago. By one guy who was learning Haskell. In 8 weeks.

<comment><USER5> While writing his undergrad thesis at the same time!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One nice feature of the newer cabal-installs is that it can compile dependencies in parallel[1], e.g.:

      cabal install pandoc -j5

Will run five parallel cabal processes.

Also this release contains attoparsec and unordered-containers as new packages \o/.

[1] Obviously, as permitted by the dependency graph. Source files within packages are not compiled (yet) in parallel.

<comment><USER7> I hope this GSOC module-level parallel build project goes thru

[http://www.google- melange.com/gsoc/proposal/review/google/gs...](http://www.google- melange.com/gsoc/proposal/review/google/gsoc2013/refold/71002?ModPagespeed=noscript)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In my opinion, Haskell Platform (HP) gets updates too slowly. I understand that the purpose is to have a coherent set of compatible packages, but in my opinion there should be a minor HP release for every ghc update in between. The fixes and improvements in ghc range from usefull to nessecary. It should be possible to release minor hp updates with the automated test suite.

As a HP user, the wait for ghc-7.6 to be incorporated has been too long imho.

<comment><USER9> What stopped you from installing ghc-7.6 yourself? I've been using 7.4 (from Platform) and 7.6 in parallel for over half a year without problem.

<comment><USER8> ok! Well I was terrified by the big fat warnings that doing so might break your packages randomly.

<comment><USER9> GHC uses a per-version package database, so that should never be possible for different GHC versions. For example, I have the 7.4 from platform installed in /usr/bin/ghc (the normal location for Platform installs on OSX) and 7.7 installed in ~/ghc.

Switching between the two versions is as easy as making sure that ~/ghc/bin is on my path before /usr/bin/ghc. All I need to do is "export PATH=~/ghc/bin:$PATH" and things work. Packages get installed in either ~/Library/Haskell/ghc-7.4.1 or ~/Library/Haskell/ghc-7.7 depending on what's in my path when I run "cabal install".

<comment><USER8> Ah thanks, did not know that! I'm on Windows but switching paths should be possible on Windows as well. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Haskell guys really, really need a coherent story for database access. Perl has this with DBI/DBD for example, Java with JDBC, .NET has one (or ten, depending how you count it), etc. Adding that to Platform is the single biggest thing they could do to drive adoption.

<comment><USER11> What's wrong with HDBC?

<comment><USER10> HDBC isn't in Platform!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Maybe I'm expecting the wrong thing, but as someone not involved in development with Haskell, this landing page gave me nothing to go on.

<comment><USER13> The link which takes you to the closest thing to an About page is, for some reason, labelled "Problems?".

<http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell_Platform>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there something like ipython for Haskell? GHCI is fine but some subtleties are missing. Like typing a prefix and going through a subset of the command history. And also the numpy/scipy/matplotlib toolkit that come with the -pylab option would be great!

<comment><USER14> Maybe it is possible to write a haskell mode for ipython? I watched Fernando and one of the Julia guys hack up communication between ipython and a Julia interpreter in an afternoon. Depending on how ghci is implemented it might not be much harder.

<comment><USER7> [http://bfj7.com/posts/2013-04-22-innovation-week- days-1-2.ht...](http://bfj7.com/posts/2013-04-22-innovation-week- days-1-2.html) (haven't tried it yet)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Changelog: <http://www.haskell.org/platform/changelog.html>

</comment><comment><USER16> Can somebody elaborate what is this?

Edit: Let me rephrase my question: Is this for someone who would like to start learning Haskell?

<comment><USER17> In short: Yes.

It is the "batteries included" version of Haskell that comes with basically everything you need to write production ready software. There are obviously a lot of useful packages on `cabal`, but they are mostly useful so that you don't have to recreate the wheel (or want to do web-dev).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would also recommand EclipseFP. It is an amazingly well working Eclipse Plugin for Haskell with incremental compiling, debugger, Smalltalk like browser, and other nice features.

<http://eclipsefp.github.io/features.html>

<comment><USER8> It is a very good plugin. Moresmau and other contributors deserve a statue.

It even has support for uuagc (dsl for attribute grammars)!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I already have ghc-7.6.3 installed and up to date cabal. What do I get by installing haskell-platform that I don't have right now? AFAIU Haskell Platform is just a vetted list of packages bundled with GHC?

<comment><USER20> There's also a few other small tweeks, at least over building ghc from source. But the tweeks don't matter unless you're doing relatively unusual stuff (like trying to ffi out avx simd enabled c codes :-) ). (Which will be easier do do with any ghc in a week or so once some tool hacking I'm doing is done)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Link to Arch Linux package is broken.

Here is out-dated version from AUR though. <https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/haskell-platform/>

<comment><USER22> Officially Arch Linux doesn't follow the platform. The Haskell platform tries to pick the most mature and well tested versions. Arch Linux, on the other hand, picks the upstream bleeding edge for all its packages, not only Haskell ones. Right now, the policy seems to pick the latest package versions needed to build the latest version of pandoc and XMonad.

This is not necessarily bad. I like to develop in Arch because it usually comes with future versions that will eventually make it into the platform (I have the GHC version in mind, mostly). However, if you want to distribute your code widely, you'd better be sure it builds properly with the current Haskell platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've recently discovered livescript (livescript.net), a puckishly named coffee-script-inspired transpiler for node. Its syntax captures some of the best of Haskell, without going down the 'HaskellScript' route followed by e.g. Fay (which I find tends to trade off usability and fitness for purpose against fidelity to the original.) Livescript's answer to underscore is called 'prelude-ls' and is pretty powerful. Highly recommended for Haskell fans stuck in a sandbox.

</comment><comment><USER24> Fwiw it installs beautifully on Debian-based systems using the Debian Alternatives system:

[https://github.com/byrongibson/scripts/tree/master/install/h...](https://github.com/byrongibson/scripts/tree/master/install/haskell)

This lets you install multiple versions, of both Platform and standalone GHC, and swap the active one with a single command. Those scripts are for a prior version, but works the same, just update the versions.

</comment><comment><USER25> The new documentation format is quite nice!

</comment><comment><USER26> Would be great to have an actual aggregated changelog.

</comment><comment><USER27> is this supported on ubunty raring yet?

</comment><comment><USER28> On a Gentoo system you can install it with:

        layman -a haskell
        emerge haskell-platform</comment>


Why Is Almost No One Using Apple Pay? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2015/06/01/why-is-almost-no-one-using-apple-pay/

<comment><USER2> The retail (POS) experience is still inconsistent, frustrating.

Some POS always require a signature, which I don't understand. Some POS allow "swiping" at any time, others fail unless done at just the right time. Some POS are just flakey (please try again, while the line behind you glares).

Apple needs to publish a POS-side Human Interface Guideline (to compliment the iOS side).

[https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserEx...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/ApplePay.html)

They also need to create an exemplar POS for others to copy.

And since we seem stuck with the self-service checkout, Apple needs to fix that experience too. Currently, they're two different UIs bolted together, both terrible.

<comment><USER3> Yes, everything about it is awkward. Is the timing right? Is the phone in the right place? Does this terminal even work with mobile payments (regardless of whether it appears to be one that _should work)? Does anyone even understand what you are doing if you have difficulty?

It's not hard to see why this is having a difficult time gaining traction. The payoff for the consumer isn't particularly large, even when it works well.

The notable exception might be vending machines. That has worked pretty well on the few occasions that I have tried it, and is much easier than a swipe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The elephant in the room is that from the consumer's POV there is nothing wrong with credit card payments. Often now you can just swipe and sign no signature for small purchases. Try to add contactless or contact or other smart card tech and it screws up wastes peoples time and you become one of the people George Carlin wants to kill.

Merchants have problems but apple pay doesn't solve them, in particular the 6% fraud rate is even worse than the black card. The current model supports high rates for the banks because they eat the fraud. A drastically cheaper system needs to greatly reduce fraud and that ain't easy.

<comment><USER5> Apple Pay does solve the fraud rate since it only uses a token and does not pass the vendors POS terminal the actual CC number, thus the vendor can't possibly be held accountable for the fraud -- only the bank which approves the fraudulent CC can be held accountable.

<comment><USER4> Hypothetically it does, but practically it is too easy to bind a card to Apple Pay so that binding a card to Apple Pay is a great way to take advantage of a stolen card.

Also note that the people who are most interested in new and exotic payment systems are the scammers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The only place I regularly use it is at Whole Foods, where it actually works quite well and is a bit faster than a card. And given the glares one gets in the WF line, I would definitely be informed if it was inconveniencing anyone...

However, this looks to have been the result of concerted corporate effort and training (every clerk knows how it works, etc.). Can't see it catching on in a small business.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. My sister owns a coffee shop/chocolate shop. There's no advantage for her at all - its all for the customer. And most of her customers are making small purchases, trivial to do with cash or a card.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wanted to use Apple Pay so bad.. loaded several cards into it, and tried it everywhere I shopped.. Turns out, not a single place I shop at regularly accepted apple pay/nfc.

I know visa/mc/etc are pushing nfc and POSs are required to be updated soon... so maybe next year.

I don't think anyone who has tried Apple Pay is wondering why no one is using it.

<comment><USER4> I have been getting the smart cards with contacts from my bank, I think the banks are pushing the contact standard because smart phones don't support contacts and it helps them keep the card racket going.

<comment><USER8> You're right.. that's EMV (not nfc).. that's what I was thinking of. Merchants are required to update their POSs by Oct of this year for EMV.

But when they upgrade, newer terminals usually also support nfc.

<comment><USER4> My understanding is that EMV is a protocol that can work over the wired interface or over NFC. I have a contactless debit card I was issued some time ago that definitely talks to the NFC radio in my Nexus 7

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In Manhattan I use Apple Pay all of the time and it is more convenient than using CC. Since it sends to the POS terminal a token instead of your CC number, it is also far more secure. If Apple Pay were around and used at Target and Home Depot those people who would have used it would not have their CC numbers stolen by hackers.

When I tell people the extra protection of Apple Pay, it makes them far more interested in using it. Who wants to be part of the next Target, Home Depot, Neiman Marcus violation of security?

I tend to avoid if possible these places that demand cash payments for less than $10, so in fact these places lose business because I know I'm not the only one.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've used google wallet for years and basically came to the conclusion, that outside of novelty, it doesn't offer any benefits over a card. And it's often faster to just use my card than to pull my phone out, unlock it, make sure the app opens and the reader/phone do their connection thing.

As a partner in a small business, who uses a service like square, adding mobile payments is something we'd like to do but we aren't buying hardware to support it, it makes no business sense.

<comment><USER10> I've also used Wallet for a couple of years and for a while I was using it whenever possible. Usually, my phone is quicker to grab than pulling out my wallet and finding the right card, etc. Not by much but slightly easier.

Likewise, it was a minor novelty at first so I enjoyed using it. Just tap, pay, and a receipt scrolls up the screen.

But then a bunch of my normal shops had issues when their POS provider disabled Google/Apple options to push their own. Also, some places where it should work, the terminal was broken and only accepted swipes. Then there's the paper receipt that they still hand you on top of the one you already have in your email. Still have to sign the slip. Basically the benefits of electronic payment end up negated by the continuation of paper receipts and signatures and are again relegated back to novelty status.

I think I mostly stopped using Wallet after a few attempts failed due to faulty POS terminals or changing vendor policies and I had to put the phone away and dig out the card. At that point, I wasn't just using a slightly less convenient method. I was using it _after_ failing to use the slightly more convenient method.

If POS vendors actually had any pressure to properly support Apple/Google payment systems I'd go back to using it in a heartbeat but since they don't directly suffer from poor performance (as if some chain store is really gonna hound the POS company because a segment of their customers was mildly annoyed) there is little pressure for them to improve.

Stores themselves might be pressured because they directly face the public but there's not enough motivation to invest the resources when your customers are Rite Aid, Best Buy, Safeway, and Home Depot. Those companies only care that the POS works most of the time and doesn't cost too much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In London, lots of shops/bars support contactless card payments, and everyone I know has contactless bank cards.

Doesn't seem to be a strong reason for mobile payment right now.

<comment><USER12> In Australia and I pay the majority of transactions with a wave of a card. The last thing I want to do is be fumbling for a phone and having to unlock it, find an app etc. I think mobile payments are a complete waste of time. Practically every modern country you have contactless payments for the small stuff, petrol, coffee, meals and chip and pin for the larger amounts. I don't understand why the idea still persists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Like so much "innovation" coming out of the tech community, mobile payments is a solution in search of a problem. Mobile payments are not faster, safer, or more convenient than the existing system.

I understand the potential payoff for a tech company makes the development of such a redundant technology worth the risk; it's still a sh __ty idea.

<comment><USER5> Apple Pay is faster to use than CC and it confers the additional benefit that since Apple only sends a token to the vendors POS terminal your CC number can't possibly be hacked, unlike the cases of Target, Home Depot, and Neiman Marcus to name a few.

It is faster since you simply hold your iPhone6 (+) over the CC terminal and press your thumb down. This is certainly faster than fishing the CC out of your wallet, swiping it and signing the receipt.

<comment><USER13> I didn't know that about Apple Pay (not an apple guy). I concede that that system is faster, more secure and more efficient. You win.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like Apple Pay. I use it every time I can. I can't stand receipts and signing.

What I think the reporter isn't covering adequately is why many small merchants are cash only. I suspect they are doing this to avoid taxes. These merchants know that once the txn is in a computer, there is easy visibility on their cash flow.

</comment><comment><USER15> Another problem is that paying with your phone is only more convenient if you have your phone in your hand already. Otherwise, men are probably going to the pockets of their trousers (wallet in one, phone in the other). Women are probably going dig in their purse, which has both their cards (often in a smaller wallet) and their phone. At that point you may as well go for the tried-and-tested, rather than the phone.

If you happen to have earbuds in (so many people, these days) and then moving the phone around is annoying because of the cord.

If the smart watches can do payments then it should be more convenient, provided the actual mechanics of holding or swiping the back of your wrist to the terminal works.

</comment><comment><USER16> From what i have seen i think the experience is pretty bad.

Apple Pay is (comparatively )unreliable. It could be the terminal, it could be the software, it could be the iPhone or Touch ID. I dont know, but you are 10x more likely getting into problem then waving with your plastic card. People dont like to risk and be embarrassed.

There is no real incentive to use it. If Apple could have an App and store how i had spent the money with Apple Pay, abit like personal Finance organizer then i would have use it just to keep track of my spending.

It is slow, when i saw the demo it took 3 seconds, ( actually in real life it is likely to be 4+ ) I thought it was really slow. Compare to places like Singapore, Hong Kong, or Japan where you get sub 1 seconds payment using NFC card. ( Although they are not credit card based )

</comment><comment><USER17> Many of my friends don't trust it and would rather use something like credit cards with the new secure chips.</comment>


Saudi Ties to 9/11 Detailed in Documents Suppressed Since 2002 - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2016/07/15/saudi-ties-to-911-detailed-in-documents-suppressed-since-2002/ <comment><USER2> For anyone looking for a primer on jihad, and the influence of Saudi Wahhabism here is a great read: [https://www.amazon.com/Future-Jihad-Terrorist- Strategies-aga...](https://www.amazon.com/Future-Jihad-Terrorist-Strategies- against/dp/1403975116/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1468842201&sr=1-1&keywords=future+jihad)

Walid Phares wrote 10 years ago that Europe was going to experience a wave of attacks, and also foresaw the Arab Spring.

<comment><USER3> To be fair a prediction of unrest in the middle east/Africa doesn't require much insight. I predict there will be unrest for the next 50 years at least.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't help there are 1st world influences mucking up the natural ecosystem there. For example, US attempting to overthrow Assad is not a natural process.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/world/middleeast/us- relies...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/world/middleeast/us-relies- heavily-on-saudi-money-to-support-syrian-rebels.html)

<comment><USER5> Dude. We talking about animals here? Their natural ecosystem? People deserve more respect than that.

<comment><USER6> Ecosystem: a complex network or interconnected system.

<comment><USER7> There's hardly anything "natural" about human ecosystems, or human relationships for that matter.

<comment><USER8> Depends on your definition of natural. The religious claim of 'special creation', esp. w.r.t. humans has it easy here:

> existing in nature and not made or caused by people : coming from nature

This definition really stems from man's early assumption that we are distinctly "different" from all other natural things.

But reality tells us otherwise: People are a part of nature; they are natural. It's easier to discuss in terms of what isn't the same instead of what is the same. And that is, we are the smartest known species (being the sole species with self-consciousness is still up for debate). Therefore everything people do is natural.

<comment><USER7> So either everything humans do is natural or nothing humans do is natural. Either way, it's incorrect to say that 1st world actions in the Middle East are any more "unnatural" than what the indigenous people do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If Saudi Arabia is linked to 9/11 we need to have a serious look at the past 15 years and reevaluate our entire foreign policy justification

<comment><USER10> I hate to sound confronting, but anyone living in a western counrty which leadership sees these documents as the reason to reevaluate its relationship with Saudi Arabia should be scared by his leadership's incompetence:

Those documents aren't needed to see that the whole Saudi Establishment is the no. 1 reason for jihadist terrorism. Just look at the massive investments the Saudis made since the 1950s to recruite, edjucate and influence muslim clerics basically everywhere in the world. And boy, need I say that civil rights wasn't on their curriculum?!

The Saud Family wants the radicalization of Islam for power reasons that are comparable to the situation of the Papal States and catholic influence over christian countries hundreds of years ago. It's not Islam that is cancerous, it is the Saud Family.

<comment><USER11> This doco (Bitter Lake) suggests they _don 't_ want radicalisation at all:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02gyz6b/adam-curtis- bi...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02gyz6b/adam-curtis-bitter-lake)

It claims the Saud family needed to appease conservative clerics to maintain power, so that's why they sponsored all these fanatical clerics. They kicked the can down the road and now their chickens are coming home to roost.

<comment><USER10> As have stated other film critics [1] this documentation takes a rather one- sided approach in that it's basically the fault of the west (and of the USSR).

It seem to lack fact checking and leaves out one of the main issues surrounding modern arabic history: the delayed formation of nation-states and the threat modernism posed to existing, usually aristocratic power structures.

Specifically Saudi-Arabia felt threatened by movements like Pan-Arabism and Ba'athism and used religeous radicalism as an ideology to counter them.

Yes, the cold-war factions quickly found their adversaries on either side but it doesn't take a grain away from the pile of guilt the Saudi Establishment has amassed.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Lake_(film)#Reception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Lake_\(film\)#Reception)

<comment><USER12> > As have stated other film critics [1] this documentation takes a rather one- > sided approach in that it's basically the fault of the west (and of the > USSR).

This is also a major cultural problem to overcome for Muslims before they can be able to build enduring and prospering societies.

The thing is that every major power constantly meddles in the affairs of everyone else and it will never end, that's for sure. The Russians do it to the West, the West to the Russians, same as the Chinese, the Japanese and Indians do.

Yet these societies are not constantly on the verge of collapse and total chaos.

It is because these societies are more resilient to outside influence, because members of these societies feel more strongly connected to their government and to other members of their societies.

On the other hand in many Muslim societies I see tribal attitudes, one clan against all other clans. One Muslim group might even declare another Muslim group as an enemy on the basis of the smallest imaginable disagreement and start total war. No wonder their governments can be toppled and controlled from the outside if many don't feel a strong connection to their own nation and people.

Here this belief that all bad that has happened to you in your life is primarily caused by the US, the Soviets or more generally the infidels gives them an easy way to redirect their energy towards useless fighting (often among each other) instead of working together to improve their own societies.

This is a bad motivator for progress and nothing good or useful will ever come out of it.

If you face outside meddling then work hard on strengthening your own society so you can handle that stress, because it will never, ever stop.

<comment><USER10> _> this belief that all bad that has happened to you in your life is primarily caused by the US, the Soviets or more generally the infidels gives them an easy way to redirect their energy_

Exactly! In general, everything is the fault of the west/infidels. You see this in nowadays Turkey. And that alone says a lot about the state of muslim countries, since Turkey used to be a beacon of progress (Genocide aside).

I think Atatürk is rolling over in his grave for quite some years now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If the West would have bombed Saudi Arabia instead of Afghanistan and would have taken their oil we might be better off today.

Saudia Arabia is notorious for sponsoring mosques here in the EU that only ever seem to produce Salafi radicals and Jihadists which is in contrast to other Muslim communities that seem to have less of that problem.

Some countries in the EU already banned this influence from Saudi Arabia as it is widely considered as harmful to our societies.

But there are also some Muslim countries that did the same as they also consider their ideology as aggressive and inherently dangerous. (some of the Central Asian Muslim countries)

<comment><USER13> >If the West would have bombed Saudi Arabia instead of Afghanistan and would have taken their oil we might be better off today.

We never learn, do we?

<comment><USER12> What would you propose? Leaving a country alone that backstabs us and incites fanatics to attack us while pretending to be our friend?

Just look at what resources they have and what they potentially could do with it if they openly declared that the West is their enemy.

I'm quite sure that no one will allow Saudi Arabia to use its resources against the West. If they do we'll take all they have away from them.

By the way: It is absolutely legitimate to retaliate with force when you are under attack by another nation.

<comment><USER14> The problem is if you attack Saudi Arabia, most if not all Arab countries will be on the side of SA, which would start a major conflict.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Much of the information in the 28 pages is not new and has been mentioned in previously released documents on the 9/11 investigation. As such, the public release of these suppressed pages is unlikely to precipitate major changes in the relationship between the United States and the Saudi government. In a statement issued on Friday, the Saudi Embassy in the United States said that it "welcomes the release" of the suppressed pages, saying that they exonerate Riyadh of any direct role in the attacks."

If so then I really don't get why they would suppress these at all.

<comment><USER16> I'm guessing they've suppressed them to prevent the public from wanting to start a war with the saudis

<comment><USER15> Now why would anybody want to start a war with a country not directly involved in an attack. Oh, wait.

<comment><USER17> Ah, yes, the "BOOOOSH WANTED TO STEAL THEIR OIL" theory.

So, exactly how much of their oil did the U.S. actually "steal"? You have a barrel figure for that? A rough estimate will do.

<comment><USER18> "Why we did it"

[https://vimeo.com/88670339](https://vimeo.com/88670339)

Oil. As in for "free market."

<comment><USER17> I'm not going to go watch a propaganda video.

How much oil did the U.S. steal from Iraq?

Do you have an answer to that question or not?

<comment><USER18> It's your turn now to give the reference for your claim, I've given mine. Alternatively, you'd have to specify what actually from that documentary isn't true, and given the high possibility of the authors to be sued, I'm quite sure they double checked their sources.

<comment><USER17> What "claim"? That the U.S. didn't "steal Iraq's oil"?

No, I don't have to watch your video to determine that this didn't happen. Nor does anyone else.

Edit: can you point out to me on this chart where all the "stolen oil" shows up?

[https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M...](https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTIMIZ1&f=M)

<comment><USER18> See the video, the most of Iraq oil was taken over by western petrol companies and physically sold to Europe. And that's why you won't see much in the chart you quote.

The video is much more nuanced than you imagine, as the goal was never to "steal the oil to bring it directly to the US" but merely to "control" the oil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So there was [1] in 2004 and [2] in 2009. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take away from the recent news now... it seems like it's just confirming what people already pretty much knew? Or is there surprising new information released?

[1] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3815179.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3815179.stm)

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/world/middleeast/24saudi.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/world/middleeast/24saudi.html)

<comment><USER20> Emptywheel went over the already-knews and new-news pretty concisely the other day:

[https://www.emptywheel.net/2016/07/15/fbi-established- saudi-...](https://www.emptywheel.net/2016/07/15/fbi-established-saudi-task- force-just-before-joint-inquiry-release/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Given the topic, curious if anyone knows anything about "Able Danger" operations:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Danger](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Danger)

Or the rapid decline of terrorism (80%) following the end of the Cold War: [https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/](https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Have you seen anyone interview Norm Mineta about what really happened in the Situation Room on 9/11? He was fired and exiled practically when people started to point out his damning statements about what happened in the Situation Room when the Pentagon was seeing a plane approach. Or how about the 66 video tapes confiscated by the FBI that could show what really did hit the Pentagon?

<comment><USER23> Are you seriously implying that it wasn't a plane that hit the Pentagon?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'll just say this: never forget who created the house of Saud in the first place. They were puppets from the start and still are.

<comment><USER25> Could you please articulate? I am totally ignorant about it, and after the release of this document, I am getting more curious.

<comment><USER26> Ibn Saud essentially came to power as a local strongman, supported by the British, set up in opposition to the Ottoman-supported faction during the First World War. Saud originally controlled the Red Sea bordering portion of Arabia, which was astride the sea route through the Suez to India.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Saud#Rise_to_power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Saud#Rise_to_power)

<comment><USER25> Thanks a lot! I finally had time to read the article.

I always wonder if that was short term thinking, or if nowadays there is still something going on. We all know that empires fall, therefore, it might be that maybe at that time the UK didn't expect Saudi Arabia to become so powerful as it is nowadays. It's like playing monopoly: you help X to destroy Y, which you don't like, but then X becomes so powerful that it starts to be a pain in the ass.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana (1995) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306 <comment><USER2> Interesting how almost everything he wrote in that article turned out wrong.</comment>


Next permutation: When C++ gets it right - <AUTHOR> http://wordaligned.org/articles/next-permutation?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wordaligned+%28Word+Aligned%29 <comment><USER2> Back when I competed regularly in TopCoder for food money in college, std::next_permutation saved my bacon. I got so good at whipping out <algorithm> in C++ that every other language's standard library felt deficient. Python's basically caught up with itertools and the built-in set type.

Often you can replace dozens of lines of for loops and if statements with set subtraction and some generator comprehensions. Sometimes the code ends up faster, to boot!

<comment> loup-vaillant Then you will absolutely love Haskell's and Ocaml's standard libraries (if you can spare some CPU cycles). Paranoid static typing with easy genericness (more flexible than C++ templates), and they don't have the one show stopping flaw C++'s <algorithm> still have sometimes: lack of locality. Until C++ has closures, a loop will often look like this:

        body(…){ code_of_body; }
        fun(…)
        {
          // (Big) blob of code
          std::loop(begin, end, body)
          …
        }

I have done it. Lack of locality _kills_ readability, so I still use loops even when std::accumulate or std::foreach would do.

<comment><USER3> Since C++ templates are Turing-complete, and at least OCaml's type system is not, I'm fairly confident that the claim that OCaml's "easy genericness" is "more flexible than C++ templates" is demonstrably false.

<comment> loup-vaillant In theory.

In practice, I found that translating from OCaml to C++ is often painful, while the reverse is quite easy. When I deal with generic code, this difficulty is largely attributable to the differences between Hindley-Milner and templates.

My conclusion is that where it really matters, C++'s templates are less flexible than OCaml's genericness. I dare you to try and prove me wrong with production code without being fired… upon.

<comment><USER3> First, I think it's important to note that as the original claimant here, the onus is on you to _prove_ your claim, not on me to disprove it. If you think OCaml's "easy genericness" is "more flexible than C++ templates" then provide an example of the exercise of such flexibility.

Second, ease of translation between languages is not particularly relevant to flexibility. Insofar as it _is_ relevant, things that are more flexible are typically more difficult, not easier, on account of that flexibility, at least in my experience.

Remember, your original claim was not about _ease_ , but about _flexibility_. I doubt you attempted the subtle transition maliciously, and perhaps your original claim was where you misspoke, but I would never argue that C++ templates are _easier_ than other forms of genericity, simply that they're _more flexible_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is one of the most truly balanced, well-written, pragmatic articles I've read on HN. Instead of the typical dogmatic spew that is nearly epidemic in blog posts, it reads more like a scientific paper, but without all the dryness.

<comment><USER5> I know a lot of blog posts that read like this, but they usually don't get modded up because there is apparently nothing exciting about learning something. Much better if you start some sort of flamewar...

I have personally observed that "Why I hate xxx" often gets many more views than "Why I like yyy". (They both attract the same amount of hate, however. When I say "I hate Java", I get comments like "DIE IN A FIRE RTARD". When I say "I like Perl", I am told that I am "the dumbest person alive".)

<comment><USER6> >> When I say "I like Perl", I am told that I am "the dumbest person alive"

Not the dumbest person alive, that would be a Perl maintainer, more like the second dumbest person alive. Joking.

I think it is probably related to the whole bicycle shed issue it is easy to rag on and have an opinion on "hate' and "like" because they themselves are opinion statements. Factual stuff like the above is infinitely more interesting than "I like beans" but it also provides less emotional reaction rating, commenting, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very good tutorial on one of the recent Code Jam problems. The solution does at first seem mysterious, but the article does show how it works nicely.

Browsing through some of the solutions to the code jam, c++ seems frequently used. It is also sort of amusing to see how many participants apparently have a stock set of utility code. There is a lot of use of the STL to do things just as the article mentions.

The inventor of STL did have some fairly scathing words to say about OO programming.

Also, speed does sometimes matter, as occasionally the large data sets do require a bit of computational power, and you are under a time limit.

<comment><USER8> I'd point out that C++ might be overrepresented in the GCJ solutions. Many of the successful GCJ competitors come from TopCoder, where the only available languages are Java, C# 2.0, and C++, so C++ is the favorite there by a wide margin. If languages like Python, Perl, etc. were available in TopCoder, I bet you would see more people using them both there and here.

<comment><USER7> Ah, I wasn't aware of that. I did read of one participant, however, who used Python and his solution would not finish in the 8 minute time limit for the large data set, but it worked for the small. So that would certainly be a consideration.

And the ones i did see in C++ were light use of C++ features, with STL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nicely done. Interesting (but true) jab at FP towards the end. Sometimes C++ is still the best tool for the job.

<comment><USER10> Not sure about that. It is true that no space overhead might be a good thing, but other reasons simply don't look that good.

"algorithms which loop rather than recurse" - something like (primitive example, I know) `f(a, x): f(a+x, x-1); f(a, 0): a` with a tail call should be compiled into a loop he's talking about. There is no difference. There is no overhead. (single `jmp f` at the end and even the arguments should be in the right place)

"Sometimes it's about shuffling, nudging and swapping" - apart from the situations where by simply inlining/analysing some functions which do the swap you can eliminate the swap completely and simply specialise the function to swap the places it reads the values from. Sometimes you don't need to swap - you just want the values in the right places and don't care how it is done under the hood. Swap done directly with a machine operation in C++ _has_ to do the actual swap.

It was a cheap shot at FP tbh :/ Still right that C++ sometimes gets things right, but for 2 wrong reasons this time.

<comment><USER11> Yes. And I guess if you choose a strict language like Ocaml, even the space overhead isn't that bad. With a lazy language like Haskell the unevalutad thunks can eat a lot of memory. But you can always make your Haskell programs strict, if you know enough magic.</comment></comment></comment>


Predicting Customers' (Unedited) Behavior - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/09/predicting_customers_unedited_behavior.html

<comment><USER2> In terms of predicting customers' behavior, this concept of holding a human context to Big Data is best illustrated with the story earlier this year in which Target predicted that a teenage girl was pregnant:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how- targe...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target- figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/)

In terms of predicting financial meltdowns, I'm interested in seeing how MIT thinks their data will change human behavior. For the most part, people know when financial bubbles are not sustainable; they just choose not to act.</comment>


Why is it so hard finding a technical co-founder? - <AUTHOR> Yes I understand the whole "why would someone who is technical making $120,000 a year want to join your startup as a CTO for small pay and equity" argument but aren't startups all about taking risks?<p>I just want to find a great technical co-founder in the bay area but it's harder than I thought. <comment><USER2> Let's clarify the implicit assumption you put in there: Why is it so hard finding a _good_ technical co-founder? It's the same reason it's hard finding a good non-technical co-founder.

With a technical co-founder you're looking for proof of skill - they've done an app on no budget, limited time, and little sleep. Twice. They scaled it singlehandedly to 20m users. They not only know Node, they're on the core team.

What a technical co-founder is looking for is the _exact same proof of skill_. Can you sell ice cubes to Eskimos at 50% mark up? Can you get investment just by walking down Market? Do you have customers begging you to give them the privilege of sending you their money?

I wrote a blog post about this a few days ago [1]. The tl;dr: If you want a co-founder, earn one.

[1]: [http://ryanlchan.com/post/32483578213/non-technical- founders...](http://ryanlchan.com/post/32483578213/non-technical-founders- learn-to-code-but-dont-code)

<comment><USER3> > _they've done an app on no budget, limited time, and little sleep. Twice. > They scaled it singlehandedly to 20m users._

This is not true. You do not need to have such credentials for a technical co- founder.

I think your entire response is full of regurgitated garbage designed to serve the valleys current paradigm: devs are worth money - ideas are free.

This has been argued ad nausea here - but the fact is that ideas are NOT worth nothing. VCs are in a position to PAY developers til the cows come home - finding an idea in a market that is sizable, people are passionate about their support and willing to pay for, and can scale etc etc etc is HARD.

This is where YC has found the sweet spot - they have a model to vet the dev skill + idea-ability of the team.

Your claim that you need to have a hacker + hustler that can singlehandledly scale to 20M users and raise funding whilst walking down market street is retarded.

I agree with your TL;DR - but not on the same level you claim it.

The real problem is that finding a technical co-founder is hard because typically the skills to be the technical side are SOLELY what support the technical person, whereas the skills that are required to be the idea/business guy are NOT the SOLE means of supporting the idea guy - so it is intrinsically easier to be in the idea position, FINANCIALLY - but it is NOT easy/free to come up with the next $X billion dollar idea.

so - I would rebut that it is important to focus on how quickly your idea can be a revenue positive business. If you have an idea - make sure you can convince a tech co-founder that your amazing idea can sustain the OP-EX as early as possible then you will have a better chance of attracting a tech co- founder.

\---

Anecdote: ahve a guy that I am working with who is really smart and is an idea guy with degrees in foreign language and international business. He worked with Mayor Newsom, the De Rothschilds and others...

His ideas typically revolve around disrupting institutions, non-profits and social behavior.

These are all great ideas that he is proposing but NONE of them have any clear way to 1) make money quickly 2) have any easy/cheap adoption path 3) not require significant upfront capital to even get to a pilot...

It is critical that you have an idea that is rock-solid in its ability to actually be "something people want to use" (and pay money for).

If you cant A) pay your tech co-founder then you damn well better be able to B) come up with an idea that is so enticing that people will pay for it out of the gate.

<comment><USER2> I never said that these credentials are required (in fact I don't think they are), but that the OP _implicitly_ believes them to be true. If you complain about the "lack of good technical cofounders" when there are _14,000 CS graduates_ every year and a flood of 'Ask HN: Smart developer needs job' posts springing up, you must either not be looking very hard or have ridiculously high expectations. The post is meant to highlight the _ridiculousness_ of what many people expect of a "good" technical cofounder.

> _I think your entire response is full of regurgitated garbage designed to > serve the valleys current paradigm: devs are worth money - ideas are free._

Well that'd be quite ironic, as I'm on the non-technical side myself. In fact my argument is that neither of these are true. If you want to go start a start up, _just go goddamn start it_. Don't wait for your magic non-technical cofound to come around and solve all your problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah you are right, I am probably not looking hard enough. I am not looking for someone who has done the aforementioned rather someone who can build good products. Nevertheless, I will go goddamn start it without a technical cofounder. Thank you.

<comment><USER2> Excellent! Two quick clarifications on what I mean by "just go goddamn start it".

1\. For a majority of contemporary companies, the primary risk is not technical, but market driven. In other words, your biggest problem isn't figuring out how to build the solution; it's figuring out what the solution should be in the first place. _A ton_ of progress can be made on this front without a single line of code. 2\. A startup is beset with an unceasing torrent of problems. You need a programmer for your MVP, true; but what happens when you need to start marketing? Do you go out and try to recruit an all star marketer? But wait we need sales as well - how many people do you want to go out and find? I don't mean to say that you need to be able to do everything, but _figuring it out_ is a _crucial_ skill to have as a founder, and this is one of the times you'll be practicing it.

Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll bite and try to give some hopefully useful thoughts...

You're not just asking someone to give up 120k and join your company, you're asking someone who's probably quite creative (assuming you're trying to hire the right guys) to get completely on-board with your vision/idea. That means:

* Give up $120k / yr (this is really unimportant in the grand scheme of things IMO)

* Give up their financial security (this is more important)

* Taking the big, long list of ideas that they'd want to implement and put yours at the top

* (Likely) give up far more time than they had to before

* Stepping away from what is hopefully a group of other smart people that they enjoy solving software problems with

You have to be careful that your pitches don't seem like "Well, I have this really great idea, you sit around and pour 5000 hours of your life over the next 18 months into implementing it exactly as I have envisaged, and I'll handle all of the business stuff! We'll totally split the profits down the middle!"

I almost fall into the group of people who you'd be looking for (maybe, though while I consult I haven't done a startup yet), and there are a few things that I'd be looking for:

* Confidence that (even if you weren't involved in any way) the product will make money (or a difference, depending on the developer).

* Interesting problems to solve. Browsium for instance probably have a hell of a time trying to hire developers, and if they weren't all coming from Microsoft, I'd imagine it would have been impossible to get a CTO.

* Confidence that you're actually going to be adding significant value, or at least bankrolling the venture. A lot of devs see a lot of non-technical roles as "easier", usually because they've never seen someone that's really great at the non-technical role. It's probably easier to hook someone by starting them contracting for you to build a prototype or something, I dunno.

I don't know how you're trying to bring people in, but you're also not hiring at this stage, you're pitching - trying to sell yourself (both ability as well as desire to add value) as well as your idea to these people. Maybe it's also SF, have you tried looking elsewhere for people?

</comment><comment><USER5> Its not about "why would someone who is technical making $120,000 a year want to join your startup as a CTO for small pay and equity", it's about why would they want to work with YOU. You may think you're qualified, but most non- technical founders (which I assume is what you are) are not.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's not hard to find a technical cofounder. It's hard to find a pedigreed cofounder.

Instead of trying to recruit someone who can walk in the door at an SFBA company at 150k, instead start getting drinks with a few people like that and leverage them to help gauge promising up-and-comers --- people just coming out of school, or, better, people hoping to make a transition from ops (administration, network engineering, &c) to development.

</comment><comment><USER7> if it's all about taking risks then why don't you take one and borrow 120k to pay for a developer? oh, you don't want to do that now do you? well that is exactly what the developer risks ~100k

</comment><comment><USER8> I think you're looking for a co-founder before you need one. That's not the step you need to solve right now.

Have you done anything towards your idea yet? When you start showcasing your abilities (selling, designing, writing, networking, planning) that's when it's far easier to get technical people on board, because then you sound hardworking, creative, easy to work with & thoughtful (i.e you've done what you can before you expect others to pitch in)

You need to get to a point where you have done EVERYTHING you can possibly do to prepare for the building stage. That shows a co-founder they can hit the ground running with their skills & won't have to think every tiny detail through, you've shown commitment to your own project.

Go speak to potential customers, do surveys, ask if they'll part with their money for your idea, Create a Twitter account & start to draw a following, name your startup, buy the domain, set up a Wordpress blog, draw wireframes of EVERY stage of your idea. Collect examples of designs, interactions and UI that you love.

Having pre-orders turns heads like you wouldn't believe.

If that all sounds like too much work then having a co-founder is the least of your worries.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you understand why someone making $120k /yr would quit and join a startup then you get the idea.

If you want a technical cofounder then you have to view it as the first hurdle in your business. If you can't even pass this hurdle what makes you feel like you can succeed at anything else?

As a random aside...do you guys think finding a technical cofounder is harder than any of the business problems you will likely encounter on the road to success?

<comment><AUTHOR> But the technical co-founder should understand that it's a startup, are people really not that open to taking a cut now for the possibility of better returns later?

I think that finding a technical cofounder can be as hard as any business problem. The reason I say "can" is because many people are lucky and find their technical cofounder in college and that makes it pretty easy.

<comment><USER10> So, you have an idea, and all you need is a technical guy to make it happen.

The problem is, whatever your idea is, you're failing to sell it to the very people you need to help make it succeed.

"the technical co-founder should understand that it's a startup" is a bogus excuse. The co-founder you're looking for is smart enough to take your idea and implement it, but you don't respect his or her ability to assess risk?

If you're selling an idea and no one's buying, you're either not making clear how you expect the idea to succeed, or you're being very clear and your potential co-founders don't think it's worth the risk.

<comment><USER11> Where were you 20+ years ago? :)

<comment><USER10> Failing to monetize gopher+.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hey man, I'm in the same boat in the sense that I'm ready to make my first hire. It is hard - yes - but hopefully that's because you've set your standards high. I think it's about attitude. I'm determined to put an A-Team together for an idea that is backed by a solid pitch and has industry traction. If you're able to articulate your idea clearly and with passion - make people excited - then you will, eventually, find people very willing to jump on board or recommend friends.

I'm taking my time with it, as the right team is crucial to success. As a random aside, I'm even going tech partner 'speed dating' next week! (I'm actually ridiculously nervous...having been with my husband for 8 years, I don't have a clue how to go on a speed 'date' lol)

</comment><comment><USER13> If the potential co-founders you're speaking to aren't showing interest, more than likely the problem actually lies on your side. As the initial founder, your job first and foremost is as a salesman. You need to sell your idea such that other people are HUNGRY to join.

Money is not the primary motivator here; passion is. Until your potential co- founder feels that passion inside himself to make your idea a reality, he won't join you (or if he does, he'll be more likely to leave once the going gets tough).

<comment><USER14> It's not about selling, it's about having something worth buying. Does a techie look at your situation and say "I want me some o' that?". If not, no amount of high-pressure selling is going to make your company/idea significantly more compelling to someone who isn't interested.

<comment><USER13> Who said anything about high-pressure selling? Don't confuse sales with manipulation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Getting a technical co-founder can be easy. There are plenty of talented techies that have already got a product ready to go or nearly ready that need someone to go out there and pitch and sell it. look for them. Ask on HN if anyone has a product that you can sell. I'm sure the response would be good, as long as you can deliver.

</comment><comment><USER16> Technical or non-technical, it is just hard to find a co-founder. Heck, it is just hard to find any kind of _partner_.

</comment><comment><USER17> Here's the thing, it is hard. Its hard to filter out the guys who can mention buzz words but push comes to show they are lost and directionless. Technically able in a past position in a different field in a related industry just may not cut it. Plus, the guy has got to want to hustle too, right?

</comment><comment><USER18> _small ... equity_

I think the expectation of potential co-founders is that they will get a large chunk of equity. Maybe you'll have more luck if you up the equity offer.

</comment><comment><USER19> The reason it's hard is because you're lumping together two really difficult problems:

1)How do I find a good technical worker?

2)How do I find an entrpreneurial partner who's a good fit?

</comment><comment><USER20> How many developers - ones that would fit your criteria and be willing to join your startup - could afford to live off of savings for 1-3 years?

</comment><comment><USER21> Why is it so hard to land a hot girlfriend?

</comment><comment><USER22> Not having your contact email in your profile doesn't help.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, I added it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The answer is because most non-technical co-founders don't bring much to the table. Many don't have startup experience, management experience, fundraising/angel/VC connections.

If you want to tech co-founders to work with you, you need to demonstrate _something_.</comment>


Opera Will Allow Ether Buying Services on Their Web Wallets - <AUTHOR> https://www.btcwires.com/c-buzz/opera-will-allow-ether-buying-services-on-their-web-wallets/ <comment><USER2> Odd how this is nearly verbatim similar to this Yahoo.com article from coindesk with a completely different author:

[https://finance.yahoo.com/news/opera-adds-crypto-buying- andr...](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/opera-adds-crypto-buying- android-143011107.html)</comment>